


the littlest scrapper

by lochnessa



Series: stupefy, stun, and other synonms [2]
Category: teen wolf - Fandom
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Racism, of the school yard bullying type, so no slurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-04-28
Packaged: 2018-01-21 04:09:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1536971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lochnessa/pseuds/lochnessa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scott's agenda for the day had never included sitting in the office at the elementary school with Straudia beside him, glaring at the floor like it had personally offended her, and Derek in a meeting with the principal, while he suffered from a little bit of déjà vu.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the littlest scrapper

**Author's Note:**

> ha, so i made the series for this, surprise!, and any other works i do in this verse. but i am the worst at giving things titles, so, not going to win any awards for this series name.
> 
> anyway, i was writing something else for this verse, but i have been wanting to do something like this, so i've been writing it for the past couple of days. 
> 
> i hope you guys like it.
> 
> edit;  
> i don't usually disable anonymous comments, because i really don't care, but i did on this fic. seeing fic that touches on these issues is important to me, and i really want to be able to do it justice, so this was something that i had to think about and restart a lot. even if it isn't the greatest fic in the world, it's important, so i really don't feel like dealing with people telling me that i deserved the harassment and bullying i got as a child because i'm gross or what not.

Scott had plans.

Those plans included lounging around on the couch while he made Derek cook for him (because he so owed him for last month, when Straudia had thrown up all over, which made Stiles throw up, and Derek had made a face before running out of the door) and texting Stiles to remind the other man that he had to sit in an office and actually do productive shit and wow, didn't that just suck.

His agenda for the day had never included sitting in the office at the elementary school with Straudia beside him, glaring at the floor like it had personally offended her, and Derek in a meeting with the principal, while he suffered from a little bit of déjà vu.

But that's where he currently is, because the universe had never really cared about his schedule.

Scott sighs, looking over at Straudia again. The ponytail that she had left the house with that morning is half undone, leaving a large chunk of her hair to fall in the front of her face. Every time she blinks, he can tell that it’s irritating her to have her hair fall in her eyes, but she never makes any movements to brush it away. There’s still dirt smeared on her face, too, and blood on her lower lip. Part of Scott starts to wonder why nobody brought her to wash her face off, or gave her anything for the scraps he can see on her shins, but he stops that train of thought, because he thinks it’ll only end with him getting agitated.

“Straudia,” Scott begins softly, deciding to change his current train of thought. “What happened, honey?” He had gotten the gist of what had gone down, but the gist had been “there was a fight on the playground” from Derek while he was breaking every speeding limit to get to the school and “the other kid looks worse” from Straudia when Derek's eyes widened at the sight of her, and that wasn’t really helpful in figuring out why everything had happened.

“They were being jerks,” is all Straudia says.

It reminds Scott even more of when he was ten, the same age as Straudia now, and he finds himself thinking that it's kind of like a circle.

He wishes he could break it.

__________

 “It won't happen again,” his mother promised, looking back at where Scott slouched against the wall. He avoided meeting her eyes, instead scowling at the floor.

“I know it won't,” the principal said and Scott's eyes flicked up from the floor. “Scott's a good kid,” he added and Scott almost snorted, because the principal hadn't even known his name when he had come in. He didn't think the man was really qualified to judge his character (even if it was a positive review).

When they were outside, Scott looked over at his mother. She was looking into the distance, her brows pulled together in thought, mouth twisted down, and guilt flooded over him.

“I'm sorry,” Scott whispered.

She startled, almost as if she had forgotten he was walking beside her, and turned to look at him. “What?”

“I'm sorry,” Scott repeated, coming to a halt. He twisted his hands together, refusing to meet his mother's eyes, because he didn't want to see the disappointment that he knew was reflected in them. “I didn't mean to do it.”

“Scott,” Melissa said, and her tone was so sharp Scott couldn't help but look up. He was surprised to note that she wasn't looking at him in disappointment. Instead, her jaw was clenched with barely sustained anger, and her nostrils flared in the same way they always did when somebody annoyed her, but he could tell none of her anger was directed at him. “Scott,” she repeated, voice a little softer. “You know that I'm no advocate for fighting-”

“I know, that's why I'm sorry,” Scott breathed out in a rush. “He was just wouldn't shut up. He called me dirty, Mom, and then he was all ‘go back to your country’ or whatever. I didn't want to hit him, but he wouldn't shut up.”

Melissa held up a hand, silencing him. “I'm no advocate for fighting,” she repeated. “But this? I mean, next time, I'd advise you found a better method for shutting people up than your fist, but I'm not mad at you.”

“You're not?” Scott asked in disbelief.

“I'm not,” she confirmed. “Just...next time, if someone bugs you like this again, come to me, okay? I'll take care of it.”

“You always tell me to go to the office if someone's being a jerk,” Scott pointed out.

“You go to the people that will help,” Melissa said. “And sometimes, baby, they just won't.”

__________

 “She's never gotten in a fight before,” Derek says, when they're home and Straudia is already in her room. Scott can hear her angrily singing along to Disney soundtracks.

“It happens,” Scott replies, sitting down at the counter with a glass of water. He pushes it at Derek. “What was the fight about?”

Derek looks uncomfortable, then, and he stares at the water in his hands for so long that Scott begins to question if Derek really heard him. He's about to repeat himself when the other man says, in a quiet voice, “They're the same kids. The ones from the bus, that pulled her hair out? They tried it again. Called her...names. She got tired of it, I guess.”

“Well, clearly,” Scott says.

“I don't know what to say to her,” Derek admits, looking up. “I mean, if I wasn't a parent, I'd be congratulating her. I know they're kids, but they were being assholes. They deserved it,” he growls, looking almost defensive towards the end.

“You don't have to defend how you feel to me, Derek,” Scott says and he notices how some of the tension in Derek's body is released when he says that. “Do you want me to talk to her? I mean, I have personal experience here,” he adds, with a rueful laugh.

Derek looks like he wants to hit something (possibly the other kid's parents), cry, and hug Scott at the same time. Really, it just makes him look constipated, and Scott reaches out to pat him on the shoulder.

“Don't hurt yourself,” Scott says.

“What?”

“Feeling too much. You're gonna explode,” Scott jokes lightly and Derek scowls.

“It's not funny.”

“I know,” Scott says, voice turning serious for a moment, because he does. He knows better than Derek, really, and that's why he stands. “I’ll talk to her.”

He's halfway to the stairs when he hears Derek's quiet “thank you”.

It's not something he knows how to respond to, because this isn't something he wants to do, much less be thanked for. So, he settles for pretending he didn't hear, and makes his way up the stairs.

__________

 Scott opens her door with promises on his lips.

“It'll get better.”

“They'll leave you alone.”

“We can fix it.”

But they're all promises that he can't keep and he knows because they're the same ones his mother made the first time he came to her crying, and kept making every time after, until he was a freshman and got suspended for three days after giving Tommy Rosen a bloody nose.

“Oh, baby,” his mother had sighed when she found him on the couch, jaw clenched while he dug his nails into his arms and tried not to cry, because he was fourteen. He was a man. Men did not cry.

He opens her door with promises, and they all die on his lips when she looks up at him.

Her hair is still a mess, but she's at least washed the blood and dirt off her face. She looks wary, the same way Derek does whenever they're in a fight and Scott walks by him. They look like cornered dogs and it’s simultaneously pathetic and gut wrenching.

“Are you on the Lion King yet?” Scott says, instead of everything else he's been planning. “Because, dude, I am the shit when it comes to angrily singing Lion King.”

Straudia smiles. It's small, but it counts.

“That was a bad word. You owe Stiles a quarter,” she says and Scott snorts. The fact that Stiles started a swear jar will never cease to amuse Scott, mainly because Stiles is always the one that ends up contributing at least five dollars each week.

“I’ll give him a quarter when he comes home,” Scott says, lowering himself onto the floor beside Straudia.

“Actually, he said the f word when he dropped a book on his toe and he didn’t put a quarter in,” Straudia says. “So, he doesn’t get this one.”

She falls quiet after that, leaning forward to snag her book of CDs off the floor. She flips through it until she finds the one she’s looking for and hands it to Scott.

“What song should we start with?” Scott asks, changing out classic Disney for the broadway version of the Lion King that Derek had bought when Straudia was six.

(“I fucking hate these songs,” Derek had grumbled that same day, when Straudia had replayed the CD for the fifth time.

“You could always take it away,” Stiles grumbled from where he sat, glaring at his coffee cup.

“And say what? I gave this to you, decided I hated your happiness, and confiscated it?”

“Say the Broadway Musical Fairy took it or something, I don’t care,” Stiles snapped.

“Could always say Stiles accidentally stepped on it. She’d believe that,” Scott offered.

Derek looked like he was considering it.

Scott caught him the next day acting out the Circle of Life with Straudia).

He’s pulled out of his memories by Straudia jabbing him in the side.

“The song is starting,” she hisses.

Scott frowns, listening to the opening before he grins. “Am I Zazu again?”

“Duh,” Straudia says.

And then she sings.  
__________

 “When did you get home?” Scott asks, pausing at the foot of the stairs.

Stiles looks up from his bowl of cereal and grins. “Just in time to hear your lovely rendition of They Live In You.”

“Straudia loved it,” Scott argues, because she did. She thinks his Mufasa voice is the best. He tells Stiles as much, but Stiles just snorts.

“That’s because I can’t sing, and Derek looks like someone is slowly murdering him whenever she makes him,” Stiles points out.

Derek glares at Stiles from where he’s standing by the stove, making spaghetti. They had it two nights ago, but Scott knows that Derek likes to cook when he’s stressed. It was something that his mom did, too, but the only thing she had ever been able to cook was spaghetti, and so it was pretty much the only stress dish Derek ever made.

“You’re just jealous because my voice is better than yours,” Scott says, dropping down into the seat beside Stiles.

“Did you guys talk or did you just sing half of the Lion King?” Derek asks. There’s a little bit of judgment in his voice. Scott chooses to ignore it.

“I was going to talk,” Scott says. “But, I guess I didn’t really know what to say. I mean, I’ve gone through some of that stuff, yeah, but all the stuff my mom told me? Never happened. It never stopped, nobody ever did anything about it, and she couldn’t ever fix it,” Scott sighs. “I’m just good at dealing with it.”

“I don’t want her to learn how to deal with it,” Derek says, glaring at the stove.

“None of us do,” Stiles mutters.

“But it’s going to happen again,” Scott says. “You can’t intimidate the rest of the world enough that they stop being assholes.”

Derek snarls and his eyes flash blue when he looks back at Scott. “I can try,” he snaps.

“Maybe some other time,” Scott says. “Right now, dude, I don’t think she needs to have her father growling at all her classmates, or any of us trying to sit her down for a talk. That can come later, okay? Just…let her be, for tonight,” he adds, and he’s shocked to find that he’s almost pleading, but he can’t help it.

He remembers those nights, when people always wanted to talk about what had happened, and all he wanted to do was go on with life, because it was annoying, but other people’s bigotry wasn’t going to stop him from being able to just enjoy himself. He wasn’t going to let Derek or Stiles ruin Straudia’s good mood, just because they wanted to do the same thing they always did.

Charge, and hope they could beat an issue until it died.

Derek looks at him closely, and for a second Scott thinks that he’s going to say something, but that’s interrupted by Straudia coming down the stairs. Her hair is wet from the shower Scott had suggested she take, and she has a brush in one hand.

“Dad, I can’t reach the back,” Straudia says, handing it to Derek. “I tried and now my arms hurt. They might fall off. I’m going to be armless,” she sighs.

“Don’t be dramatic,” Derek says, but he’s smiling. He turns to Stiles, pointing the brush threateningly. “Watch the noodles. Don’t ruin them.”

“Ruin them?” Stiles echoes when Derek walks Straudia into the living room. He turns to Scott. “I’m not going to ruin noodles.”

“Right,” Scott agrees. “But I think I’ll watch them anyway.”

“I can cook noodles! Noodles are easy.”

“They are. Really easy. But you fucked up microwaving corn last night, so, I’ll watch the noodles. That way we can actually eat,” Scott adds while he stands and Stiles glares up at him.

“Nobody told me our microwave is broken. I didn’t know I accidentally told it to go for 5,000 minutes. Why is that even an option?” he demands before pausing. “You owe me a quarter, by the way. You swore.”

“Really? Cause Straudia told me somebody dropped a book on his foot, which made him drop the f bomb, but I don’t see any quarters in the jar.”

“I gave her a popsicle so she wouldn’t tell,” Stiles says, sounding shocked. “She betrayed me.”

Scott sighs and pats him on the shoulder. “You’ll recover,” he says.

While he’s browning the meat for the sauce, he allows himself to listen in to the living room. Not enough to hear what they’re specifically talking about, but enough to tell that the flow of conversation between Straudia and Derek is light, easy.

He smiles.

__________

 “Here. Eat,” Melissa said, pushing a bowl of noodles in front of Scott.

He looked up. “You’re not going to talk about it?”

“Talk about what?” she asked, sitting down across from him with her own bowl of spaghetti.

“I gave Tommy a bloody nose,” Scott said. “I got suspended.”

Melissa looked up from her food, arching one brow. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” he said, because he didn’t. He didn’t want to pretend it hadn’t happened, either, but he didn’t want it to be the focus of their night.

His mom seemed to understand, though, because she smiled. “Alright. Then we won’t. Now, eat, or I won’t let you have ice cream.”

Scott snorted. “I can get up after you go to bed and get some. You know that, right?”

“I do,” Melissa said, before throwing a noodle at him. “Now, hush. And eat.”

**Author's Note:**

> if you're reading the end notes, i'm assuming you read the fic, so thank you. 
> 
> i had wanted to write something that did touch on straudia's race a bit more, and also the fact that derek may be a good parent, and do his best to understand, but he never will. i always imagined that scott would, though, because while straudia is a black girl and he's latino, they still experienced some of the same bullshit that people shouldn't have to. 
> 
> part of me considered having a serious talk, but i never got one. not from my mom, and not from my dad. i do know that whenever some of that stuff happened, i never ignored it, but i didn't want to focus on it, because all it did was make me mad. that's why i think scott was quick to let it go, just for the night. while i was writing this, it also turned into me exploring a little bit of scott's past. apparently i cannot set out to do one thing and stick with it. oh well.
> 
> also, the title is because straudia is derek's kid through and through. which means she's prone to using her fists instead of her words. unlike derek, straudia does not lose every fight.
> 
> lastly, if you want to find me on tumblr, i have two.
> 
> my teen wolf blog is werel0ch.
> 
> my personal blog (which i'm on a lot more for text posts and shameless selfies cause why not) is l0chnessa.


End file.
